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Google’s Beta Love May Die In Fight For Enterprise Customers

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Life in Beta is cool. So cool that five years after its April 2004 launch Gmail is still held in Beta by Google. That’s despite the fact that it has 146 million users worldwide (Comscore, April 2009). Which is sort of ridiculous.

Now we’re hearing that Google is having an internal debate about removing the Beta logos from a number of products that are aimed at enterprise customers.

About half of Google’s products were still in Beta at the end of 2008. Retaining the Beta notation in the logo gives the company a sort of get-out-of-jail-free card when problems recommend itself. Hey, it’s still in Beta, so don’t be surprised when something goes incorrect.

Here’s a problem though. Sure, users reckon Beta is geeky and fun and cutting edge. But it turns out that enterprise customers are a small more serious about stuff working. A Beta tag means what it’s supposed to mean – not completely baked. Stuff that isn’t completely baked has risks, and guys that run IT at companies aren’t fans of risk. They need things locked down. And while they’re smart enough to know that Google’s Betas aren’t really Betas, they aren’t vacant to take a risk. If something goes incorrect it’s their fault.

That’s why Google took Chrome out of Beta just a couple of months after it was first released. OEMs need relief software to install it on PCs, so they had to go it along. Marissa Mayer talked about Google Betas in general, and Chrome particularly, at the Le Web conference in Paris last December – the relevant clip is not more than.

Don’t look for Google to give up their like of Betas in general. But they may remove the Beta notation from a number of Google Apps services, which are aimed at enterprise customers, sometime soon. A source first tipped us off that a debate was vacant on at Google, and we’ve subsequently confirmed it. Some top execs feel fervently that the Google Apps products need to have the Beta notation in their logos removed to get some enterprise customers to even deliberate switching from Microsoft Office.

Four of the five core Google Apps services are still in Beta: Gmail, Google Docs, Google Talk and Google Calendar. Google Sites, previously Jot, is the lone exception. We may see those Beta notations appearance down soon, though. Stay tuned.

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